


run/(re)birth

by InAmongstTheMountains



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 17:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18102851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InAmongstTheMountains/pseuds/InAmongstTheMountains
Summary: Pre-game.  Spoilers. Sometimes survival mean running, sometimes you have to die to be reborn.





	run/(re)birth

Run.

Branches whip across your face, clawing at your arms and legs, scores and scratches along your sides. Sharp debris and treacherous rocks cut at your calloused bare feet. You cannot see in the blackness of the woods, cannot tell direction by the faint, tantalizing, sliver of the moon. Its freezing and the air burns in your lungs, chest cracking and heaving with the effort. And yet you run, not stopping, not looking back.

Away. Away again.

Away from the Farm.

Your shoulder clips a low branch, the momentum throwing you off, head swimming as you stagger away, still running. You can’t stop. It vaguely registers that it should have hurt, that your joint shouldn’t feel like this but you keep going. Adrenaline is a more potent drug than anything they forced into your system.

Have to go-

Have to move-

Not again, not again, notagainnitagainnotagain-

The sharp drop takes you by surprise, flailing in the air until gravity takes hold, slamming you down into the rocky ruins of a dry stream-bed. In the black your vision goes white, skull connecting with the large smooth stones. You feel your fragile body bounce once, throwing you awkwardly onto your already injured arm, and, unable to stop yourself, you scream.

All the pain rushes you at once.

Your stomach heaves, vision spinning, brain unable to process the extent of the trauma. You taste the bitter chlorinated bile and the coppery froth of your blood. Everything feels a maniacal kaleidoscopic merry-go-round; it rips out your breath in scarring pulls and you collapse among the rocks and stones, tears burning trails down your cheeks.

But it’s quiet, too quiet, and every alarm in your brain is screaming because someone must of heard your pained shout.

And that’s not good.

It takes tremendous effort to scrabble under the embankment, hiding in the shadows among the broken roots and the night bugs. A centipede scurries across your hand and into the inky darkness before you’re capable of processing that its there. Each heartbeat makes your head throb, threatening you with unconsciousness. It would be so much easier to let go, but you can’t, even if that means facing the reality of your bruised and broken body. You look down, the barest of starlight, a meager hope, painting your world in greyscale. Your knuckles are covered in bruises and cuts, and in one hand you still wield a bloody scalpel.

It doesn’t feel real. The bare weight of the stainless knife the sword that won you your freedom. How was it that barely two hours ago, you almost didn’t take it? You almost let this chance fall through your fingers? A flare of agony in your shoulder and the knife drops into the dirt.

Stop. Stop.

Breathe. Breathe.

Dislocated, you’re sure of it. Fuck.

You need to keep going, but you can’t move with an arm totally useless, and you will not go back, you can’t ever go back. Not for a third time. Not again.

It’s amazing how instinct can take over in these situations, bleeding and crying in the dirt. The root tastes like soil and sap, dirt falling into your face as your teeth dig into the soft wood.

One. Two.

You force your back muscles to relax, good hand trembling around your useless limb, your neck tingles, strained and warning of damage.

Three.

Your howl is stifled by the plant matter, just as you’d hoped, but that doesn't stop your head from swimming and nausea from rolling through your protesting, empty, gut, as you hear your bones click, popping your arm back into its socket. Its enough to make you spit out the bark and dirt, gagging and retching.

And that was just the first part.

It’s a painful and trying task to catalog your injuries. You whimper at each bruise, each long gash. Even during the worst of your fights back with the Rangers you’ve never experienced this kind of pain. It’s like you’d been hit by a truck and were not lucky enough to die.

Seems a cruel constant in your life.

Seconds pass to hours, or maybe hours regress to minutes. Time is funny as your heart ceases trying to break through your already tender ribs. Your hand moves away from your side and comes back bloody. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

You want to sleep, to drop into oblivion, but fear is a more potent motivator than anything you’ve ever known. The Farm can still track you, still find you, still claim you, still bring you back.

Sterile walls. Blinding lights. The scent of chemicals forced up your nostrils. Cold floors beneath unshoed feet. Needles in your arm. Aching teeth from the subsonic dampeners.

Your battered fingers find purchase with the scalpel in the dirt.

You know this is crazy, you know one centimeter off and you’d consign yourself to bleeding out here in the woods, and it all would have been for naught.

Not for naught.

You showed them. You escaped. You’d be dying free.

That brings a smile to your bloody lips.

In the time you’ve been sitting, your muscles have seized, protesting every movement as you shudder, inch by inch out into the pale light.

You’ll need to see for this.

Thankfully, you don’t have to roll your sleeve up too far for this, the soft inner flesh of your arm appearing a morbid blue-grey in this light. You shudder. Your head pounds. You bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself grounded. You won’t go back. Not again.

How many days since they dragged you back have you dreamed about this? How many times have you felt for the tracker embedded in your body, the precaution if you escaped again?

You position your arm, digging your thumb deep into a wound on your thigh. Pain flashes, lancing up your body. Adrenaline floods your brain. The knife flashes in the faint light. Your hand is steady.

Scarlet blood wets the stones that have been dry for months. You cant remember if you kept in your scream. Tears of pain and rage blur your vision.

It’d be so easy to drag the blade just a hair to the right….

You can’t see so instead you feel, dirty nails digging into the self-drawn wound on your arm, hot and wet and searching. Fingertips brush the grain-sized chip, scrambling for purchase. Each brush past your eviscerated nerves threatens to push you over the brink as you finish your self surgery.

And then your free.

Dizzy from the loss of blood, you can’t make out the pill-shaped tracker that had been your jail just as much as the walls and dampeners had been. Iron and dust fill your nostrils and an ugly crazed laugh is wrenched from your cracked throat. You almost died and it’s the most alive you’ve been in months. Reborn bloody and screaming like all humans do.

A crack rings out, the primitive note of stone on stone and what had been your collar now just a crushed speck of silica and plastic on the stream-bed.

The forest is quiet. The night bugs and birds a low choir bearing witness and hymn to your success. It’s with surprising ease that you force yourself to stand, as if something had been born in you on that cusp between choice and death, hot and roiling, and filling you with a sick shiver of delight. Then you’re dizzy. And you have to deal with the hated sight of your orange tattoos to tear at your suit and bind your arm.

Free. You chant to yourself, forcing your broken body back on the trail, towards the saving light of the rising crescent moon.

And never again.

Never again.


End file.
